Lord True: My Lords, noble Lords know that there has been so much concern in this House about overcrowding that some will be asked to leave your Lordships’ House, but 75% of the seats have been available at every stage of this important debate.
I declare an interest as a part-time resident of Italy for 37 years. I guess that I must have spent several years of my life in toto in that great country. But the context for this debate needs to be brought before noble Lords. It is the continuing efforts of the Government to pass legislation to implement the will of the British people in the referendum. Last week, in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, used a debate on housing to say,
“the only way … to avoid the impoverishment of the British people, is to reverse … the decision to leave the EU … in fact, to stop Brexit”.—[Official Report, 11.1.18; col. 327.]
He spoke for what I have dubbed the fat yellow line opposite—100 unelected Lib Dem Peers aching to block the democratic will of the British people and force a second referendum.
On the legislation, they are bettered by the unprincipled opportunism of Labour. Bills to withdraw from the EU, the single market and customs union would pass easily if Labour kept its election promises of last year. Tony Blair says that stopping Brexit is more important than seeing Labour in power. But it will not be just Telford and Mansfield that go Tory if Labour take his line in this House.
My position is different. I do not want to reverse the public’s decision or stop Brexit. I do not agree that leaving the EU will impoverish the British people. We should remember that that was Project Fear’s line, shamefully orchestrated by the Treasury but readily broadcast by others. An EU ambassador recently told me that not one of our UK envoys made a single hint to the chancelleries of Europe to take the leave vote seriously. Having heard some of the interventions today, I wonder what they are now saying about no deal.
Project Fear told us that a vote to leave would cause “immediate and profound shock”, and a recession costing 500,000 to 800,000 jobs. But employment is up by 400,000 and unemployment is at a 20-year low. Mr Osborne, of course, was Project Fear’s mastermind and I find it sad to see a great newspaper like the Evening Standard still being used as a vehicle for what I guess now is project whimper laced with personal bile. Mr Osborne threatened an emergency Budget if the British people voted to leave. The noble Lord, Lord Darling, standing with him, warned of emergency Budget after emergency Budget. He said that he was much more worried than he had been in the crisis of 2008, which he handled so well. We all remember the threats—2p on income tax, 3p on the higher rate, 5% on inheritance tax, alcohol and petrol duties up, and 2% cuts in health, defence and education. None of that happened.
That is a meaningful background to the way in which I assess this report. Of course it impresses in its scholastic legal analysis, and we have heard some exposition of that in the debate. But it fails because, while it may not be Project Fear or even Project Whimper, it is another giant sigh of despair, a litany of ifs, buts, could’s and maybe’s, consistently loaded with spin to bury or—what was the phrase?—give the quietus to any idea of no deal. It reads as a siren call for longer and ever more tortuous negotiations, extending the withdrawal period and even, we now learn, our membership of the European Union. This brings us to the gravamen of the matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who is not in his place at the moment, was classically clear when he said that staying in the EU was his objective. That is the broad background to the apparently narrow ground of the report and this debate. Staying in the EU will not be accomplished by the frontal attack of the Liberal Democrats, although they will provide the votes: it will be the mandarin nudging, bit by bit, back into the same old sheep pen—perhaps in Kinlochard—after which, no doubt, not only Britain but the sheepdog will be called to heel.
We start these negotiations, uniquely, with no tariffs on either side. Who wants to impose them? In assessing risk, why did this report not press, as others have said, the overwhelming public duty of EU leaders not to hobble access to UK markets for their citizens? Where is that in the report? Free trade is the greatest generator of hope, prosperity and jobs known to mankind. The report totally ignores the benefits of opening up to a wider world that a bad deal could actually delay. Canada, China, South Korea and India are not even mentioned, while Australia and New Zealand get one reference in a tendentious context. Our great trading partner, the United States, creeps in twice with no comment on the risks of free trade being kicked into the future.
Of course, I thank the committee for its hard work and I join others in sending my best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Jay, who serves this House so well, as he did his country. The report will be a useful legal vade mecum but it does little to shape the acquis commune in the Westminster mandarin and media beltway. I disagree with the view expressed in the report that there would be a “crucial advantage” in extending EU membership after 2019. The people voted to leave in 2016, not some time in the 2020s at your Lordships’ pleasure. The Chancellor was right the other day to challenge the EU to say more about what sort of future it wants. He is no out-and-out Brexiteer, but a man with the interests of this country and Europe at heart. We do not need or want a hard border with the Irish Republic, and perhaps when he winds up the debate my noble friend will tell us who does want one. Of course we do not want Lufthansa airplanes circling Gatwick until they fall from the sky, as Mr Barnier hints. Who is suggesting such nonsense? These matters can be readily resolved and we should stop letting the shape and image of negotiations be finagled by others.
In conclusion, I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will confirm that an implementation period will be just that: implementation that is brief,  limited in scope and limited in time, not an across-the-board transition, booting the can ever further down the road. I hope that he will reject any idea that the report suggests of extending EU membership and can confirm that if we do face stalling and failure to respond positively to the many offers of our Government, then no deal will remain an option that must lie on the table. That is certainly preferable to any deal which binds the UK to tracking the rules and regulations of the poorest performing sector of the world economy over the last generation.